Global leaders, tech executives convene in Paris for AI summit
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The summit co-hosted by French PM Emmanuel Macron and Indian PM Modi will discuss AI governance, ethics, and aims to invest 500 billion dollars over four years into US Artificial Intelligence infrastructure.
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People take part in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit, at the Grand Palais, in Paris, on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
Government leaders and tech industry executives were set to meet in Paris for a summit on Artificial Intelligence to discuss AI governance, ethics, accessibility, and other topics.
The summit, co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will see around 1,500 guests, including US Vice President J.D. Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, and tech CEOs, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
It comes after Macron emphasized France's efforts to establish itself in AI and invest in it. On Sunday, he announced during a TV interview that France is looking to invest 109 billion Euros in the coming years, which he called "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'."
The cash would come from the United Arab Emirates, "major American and Canadian investment funds" and French companies, Macron indicated.
Trump announced the "Stargate" joint venture on January 21st, an initiative that aims to invest 500 billion dollars over four years into US Artificial Intelligence infrastructure, with AI giants OpenAI, Softbank, Oracle, and wealth fund MGX as part of this initiative.
Stargate aims to create the world's largest AI infrastructure. This includes Data Centers for AI training and all the software and hardware required. According to Trump, Stargate will create more than 100,000 jobs.
An indirect goal of this project is the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a hypothetical form of AI that could match and even surpass human intelligence.
Shortly before the announcement of Stargate, Chinese AI Chatbot DeepSeek broke the global AI market, by matching the performance of top AI models like chatGPT for a fraction of the cost. For comparison, DeepSeek costs 5.6 million dollars, while chatGPT 4 costs four billion dollars in development.
In a related context, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is expected to announce around 10 public supercomputers designed for use by researchers and startups while attending the summit in Paris.
Additionally, a group of countries, organizations, and companies said they would allocate 400 million dollars in a partnership dubbed "Current AI," which aims to raise as much as 2.5 billion dollars to provide AI developers with more data and infrastructure and focus AI on "public interest."
Current AI aims to raise as much as $2.5 billion for its mission to grant AI developers access to more data, offer open-source tools and infrastructure for programmers to build on, and "develop systems to measure AI's social and environmental impact".
"We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said.
